Baseball Remembers: William Bell

Here are two players who are shown in Baseball-Reference.com to have exactly 114 career wins. Which one was better?

A couple of things are worth noting right away. The first is that the pitcher on the left was mostly a reliever while the one on the right was mostly a starter. The second is that the right-hand player has some missing data, which tells you he probably played either a long time ago or in a league that didn’t capture certain information, or both.

A third thing worth mentioning is that 1,700 career innings mostly in relief is a lot. Among all players in history who were relief pitchers in at least 80% of their career appearances and started 50 or fewer games, only two exceeded 1,700 career innings. Both of them are in the Hall of Fame, including Rich Gossage, who tops the list with 1,809.1 innings pitched.

The other guy is our mystery reliever from the left-hand side of the graphic. That’s Rollie Fingers, famed closer for the A’s, Padres, and Brewers. He was a seven-time All-Star, a Cy Young and MVP winner, was the all-time leader in saves at the time he retired, and pitched for three straight World Series winners in Oakland. Throw in his famous handlebar mustache and unique name, and it’s safe to say that Fingers was easily one of the most recognizable players in baseball during his career.